Bernard, Claude [key], 1813–78, French physiologist. He turned from literature to medicine, working in Paris under Magendie and teaching at the Collège de France and at the Sorbonne. One of the great scientific investigators, he is known as the founder of experimental medicine because of his work on digestive processes, especially the discovery of the glycogenic function of the liver and of the action of pancreatic juice, and on the vasomotor mechanism. He wrote An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865, tr. 1927).
See J. M. D. Olmsted and E. H. Olmsted, Claude Bernard and the Experimental Method in Medicine (1952); R. Virtanen, Claude Bernard and His Place in the History of Ideas (1960).
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